


The Domestic Life of the Dark One and his Lady, as observed by Emma Swan

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform, Rumbelle is Hope, Storybrooke - curse broken but no magic, post-Season 1, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 22:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14388042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: A post season 1 canon divergence, in which the curse broke at the end of season 1, but Rumpelstiltskin held off on bringing magic back for reasons still unknown, so none of the magical shenanigans at the beginning of season 2 happened.Emma is getting used to life in the newly-decursed town of Storybrooke when circumstances force her to go into hiding at Rumpelstiltskin’s house. Whilst she’s there, she gains a privileged glimpse at his and Belle’s relationship which gives her hope for her own life.Written for the @rumbelleishope event.





	The Domestic Life of the Dark One and his Lady, as observed by Emma Swan

Emma Swan had been having a very good day up until the point when she had been forced to fake her own death. To make matters worse, she’d only had six and a half minutes’ notice in which to stage her demise and to make matters even worse than that, the only person who was currently aware of her continued existence was Mr Gold, whom Emma still didn’t trust quite as far as she could throw him.

Maybe that was a bad analogy. He wasn’t exactly a large man and Emma had a very good throwing arm, even if she did say so herself, so she could probably throw him a lot further than she thought. Especially if she was annoyed with him. 

Right now she couldn’t really be annoyed with him since he had just saved her life, and she was currently hiding from the rest of the town in the back of his Cadillac.

“Are you sure I can’t let my parents know that I’m all right?” she asked.

“Miss Swan, your parents are lovely people, but completely unable to keep a secret. If you let them know, everyone will be rejoicing in your survival within a couple of hours, and right now, news of you not being dead will only serve to make your assailants redouble their efforts. You’ve already seen what they’re capable of doing.”

Even though she was crouched in the back of the car, Emma could still see the smoke rising from the remains of the Sheriff’s Station. Apparently, when deprived of magic, fairy tale characters could get very creative when they wanted to kill someone and they had access to unstable chemicals at the packing plants down at the docks.

Emma sighed and looked up at the roof of the car as they took the back roads around the edge of the town towards Gold’s home. To think, half an hour ago the most serious thing she’d had to deal with was ownership disputes and the headache of people who had been kings and queens in the Enchanted Forest now attempting to turn back twenty-eight years of democracy and restore the feudalism they’d always been used to.

Regina’s curse had been broken, but there had been no big poof of magic that had taken everyone back from whence they came, and so everyone was now trying to get used to living in the Land Without Magic whilst very clearly having memories from a land with it.

Emma privately suspected that there might have been a big poof of magic, but that Gold was holding out on them for some reason. He’d taken the magic that she’d fished out of Maleficent after all, but then nothing had really come of it. All she knew was that he was hiding it very well, because both she and Regina had tried to find it and come up short. She couldn’t even get a search warrant because as Regina had pointed out, once the lynch mob outside her door had got bored and ultimately left her alone, the magic was his own property and they couldn’t really confiscate it.

Emma could only hope that whatever he was saving it for was worth it.

Being sheriff in a town full of former fairy tale characters was always going to be an interesting experience, but Emma had really not counted on the fact that in all fairy tales, there are heroes and villains. Some of the villains, like Regina and possibly Gold, although from what Emma could tell Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t really so much of an outright villain as a trickster who helped whichever side was willing to give him what he needed, appeared to be relatively genre savvy and were just accepting the changed status quo and adapting to it. Perhaps that had something to do with the fact that they’d been awake for a lot longer than anyone else.

Other villains, however, weren’t quite as adaptive, and in the wake of the curse breaking, Emma had suddenly found herself facing problems from people whom she had never faced problems from before.

For example, the judge. Sure, before he had been your stereotypical old white guy and Emma had really not held out much hope for leniency when Mary Margaret had been about to face trial, but he’d been comparatively harmless.

Man, that had been a mistake in judgement. Now he’d remembered that back in the Enchanted Forest he’d been Claude Frollo of Hunchback of Notre Dame fame, and he was trying to recreate his legal reign of terror here in Storybrooke, much to both Emma and Regina’s chagrin. All things considered, it was the constant battle against Frollo that had forced Emma and Regina to put aside their differences for a while and actually work together to stop him trying to enact some kind of hostile takeover. It didn’t help that several of the ordinary citizens who had led ordinary, mundane lives, now remembered that they’d been soldiers in a previous life, and a few of them were definitely willing to take up arms again in the name of whoever was willing to pay them.

Emma was just thankful that none of them were trained with firearms and there was a distinct shortage of swords in rural Maine.

“You know, I really don’t think that this is a good idea,” she said to Gold presently. “Why are we doing this again?”

“Because the easiest way to find out who wanted to blow you to smithereens is to let them think that they succeeded and then see what they do. Lulling them into a false sense of security always works.”

“Right.” Emma was not entirely convinced by this. “You know, I’m sure it’s Frollo, can’t I just go and arrest him now?”

“No.” Gold’s voice sounded calm and patient but Emma thought she could detect the slight hint of suppressed laughter, and she glared at him in the rearview mirror.

“He might not have been working alone,” Emma conceded. “He’s an astute guy but I’m not sure he could make homemade explosives. Now, that woman who runs the tearooms, she could certainly do it.”

“I’ve no doubt that you’re correct, but shall we wait and see what happens next, Sheriff?”

Emma gave a huff of frustration. “How do I know that you didn’t do it?”

“Because I have absolutely nothing to gain from you being scattered in several pieces all over Storybrooke,” Gold said. “Besides, if I wanted to get rid of you I’ve got at least seven different methods that are far quicker and cleaner and I would have used them by now.”

“That’s not at all comforting, Gold. You really don’t tell someone that kind of thing when you’re about to hide them in your home.”

Gold just chuckled, which did nothing to reassure Emma in the slightest.

“Can I get up yet?” she grumbled. “I can see that we’re out of the town centre. No-one’s going to see me.”

“Yes, all right. As amusing as it is to see you concertinaed in the back there, I can appreciate that it’s not the most comfortable of positions. We’re almost there.”

Emma struggled into a more upright position and peered out of the window. Gold lived on a quiet street in the most upmarket part of the town - go figure - and she was right in thinking that there was no-one about. This place was the home of all the minor nobility with whom Regina had had no quarrel in the old world; they had simply been transplanted from one life of moderate luxury to another one, and Emma had, thankfully, never had any trouble with them apart from the odd standard middle-class complaint about parking restrictions being violated or loud dogs barking. She didn’t think that any of them would pay any attention to what was going on in the pink house; now that everyone had remembered exactly who Rumpelstiltskin was, the majority of the sensible part of the population was giving him a rather wide berth.

Emma was a little surprised to see the front door open seemingly of its own accord, and then Belle’s head peeped out from around it.

It wasn’t that Emma had forgotten about Belle, per se. It was more that she hadn’t really had time to process the young woman’s existence, what with everything else that had been going on in the town at the time. She wasn’t there one minute and she was there the next, and she had reunited with Gold in much the same way as everyone else had reunited with their loved ones now that the curse had been broken.

There was some vague notion in the back of her mind that this must be the girl that Gold had beaten up Moe French over back when that had happened, and the fact that she’d honestly never come across the woman in the town before the curse break had raised a few alarm bells. Other than that, Emma was happy to just accept her for who she was and leave it at that. Henry had tried to explain her significance with the aid of his story book, but Emma had been trying to stop a crowd from mobbing the mayor’s office at the time so she hadn’t been paying too much attention.

“I’m glad that you’re all right,” Belle said once they were all inside the house, Gold having kept a furtive lookout for any curtain twitching in the vicinity. “You can see the smoke even from here, it must have been a very impressive explosion.”

It had been. Emma’s ears were still ringing as a result of it. She shook her head in disbelief. This was a town filled with fairy tale characters designed as some kind of sleepy backwater sort-of paradise. There should not have been any exploding sheriff’s stations to contend with.

“I’m glad that you’re all right too,” Belle added to Gold, smiling as he slipped an arm around her waist and greeted her with a kiss.

“It’ll take more than that to get rid of me,” he assured her.

Belle just laughed, and Emma found herself gawping unashamedly at the tenderness of their interaction. It was as if, in the split second it took him to walk through the door, Gold had become a completely different person. There was a depth of love in his eyes that had definitely not been there before, and considering their rather antagonistic history together, she definitely wouldn’t have thought him capable of such emotion. This man was meant to be a scourge; her own parents had kept him locked up, for crying out loud. He was, or at least had been, a dark magician of the highest order, and yet here he was, completely and absolutely besotted. She’d never felt more like a third wheel in her life, but there was something so intense about what she was seeing that Emma really didn’t want to draw attention to her presence and ruin the moment. It was almost mesmerising.

Belle broke the shared gaze and moved away towards the stairs.

“I’ll get the guest room ready for Emma if you start on dinner?”

“Of course, sweetheart.”

Emma was pretty sure that she was dreaming and would have been convinced of the fact had it not been for the smell of smoke emanating from her jacket.

Finding herself alone in the hallway, Gold having disappeared into the kitchen, and still wondering at the state of her reality, Emma slowly followed Belle up the stairs. She’d been in Gold’s home before, searching for an intruder after Moe French had broken in, but she’d never been able to get a good nosy look at it before now. It was absolutely crammed to the rafters with antiques and relics, and she wondered how much of it had come through from the Enchanted Forest with him like the articles in the shop. None of it looked particularly otherworldly though, just expensive and tasteful, so maybe he’d just got it in his deal with Regina for a comfortable life in this world.

Belle was in what was obviously the guest room, pulling sheets and blankets out of the ottoman at the end of the bed and putting pillowcases on.

“I’m still not used to the kitchen appliances,” she said by way of explanation, “but there’s not much change in bed linen between worlds. I’m far more at home with cleaning and laundry than I am cooking. Not that I was all that much of a cook beforehand, as Rumpel will no doubt attest.”

Emma came over to give her a hand; it felt wrong not to help out in some way since she had unceremoniously arrived in Belle’s home with very little notice and now needed a bed for the night and a hiding place for however long it might take to catch the villains who wanted her dead.

“Don’t you have twenty-eight years of experience with this world’s kitchen appliances?” she asked nonchalantly.

Belle shook her head, and her warm expression faltered into one of sadness.

“I have no memories of Storybrooke,” she said quietly. “I was in the hospital… I don’t have cursed memories like everyone else does. This is all new to me.” The corner of her mouth quirked up a brief smile. “I like to think of it as an adventure in a new place, and Rumpel is my faithful guide through it all.”

Well, that definitely explained why Gold had been so intent on causing Regina some kind of bodily harm in the immediate aftermath of the curse breaking. If Belle had been in the hospital with no memories for the entirety of the curse then it would be Regina who had put her there. She glanced sideways at Belle as she smoothed down the sheets and stood back to admire her handiwork. She was quite possibly the most harmless person she’d ever met, and it was a chilling thought to realise that she’d probably been locked up simply because of her relationship with Gold.

Still, they were together again now, and it was quite clear that they were not going to let anything else get in between them. Emma decided that it would be a good idea to change the subject. She did wonder just what the relationship was between the two of them. The sheer depth of love that they both displayed for each other made her think that they’d been very close in the Enchanted Forest, but there was the tenderness of new lovers there as well.

“So… I take it that this isn’t your room?” she began.

Belle blushed.

“No. Rumpel and I… Well, he did give me this room at first, but I kept having nightmares about the hospital and, well, you know, one thing led to another. I feel safer sleeping with him.”

“Hey, no-one’s going to judge you here. I guess that’s one definite advantage to being transplanted to modern day non-magical Maine. Much less stigma attached to pre-marital relations.”

Belle bit her lip, her cheeks still very pink. Her train of thought was obvious and Emma really didn’t want to follow it. Getting an insight into Belle and Gold’s relationship was one thing but she didn’t actually want to know all that much about their sex life. They continued to make the bed in silence, and Emma fell to thinking about the events that had just transpired. By now, the news would have spread around the entire town, and even those who had managed to miss the huge bang and billowing plume of smoke would know what was going on. Right now, everyone would be wondering what was going on and whether she had survived, trying to get hold of her for that reassurance. Emma’s stomach began to churn, and she sat down heavily on the ottoman as she thought of what the rest of the town must be going through whilst she was safe and sound and hidden in Gold’s house.

“Hey.” Belle came and perched beside her. “It’s ok. You’ve just had a very traumatic experience. Do you want to talk about it?”

Emma shook her head. “I don’t know what there is to talk about. I don’t know what to say. It’s not every day that someone plans your assassination. And you survive it. And no-one else knows that you survived it other than two people.”

Gold had said that Mary Margaret and David wouldn’t be able to keep a secret, but Henry had been secret-keeper for the entire town for an incredibly long time, and out of everyone, he was the one that she really needed to tell. She’d left her phone in the station, not having had time to grab it when Gold had told her to make a run for it if she didn’t want to get blown to smithereens.

“Belle, do you have a cell phone? I’ve got to let Henry know I’m ok. I don’t care if it scuppers Gold’s plan for flushing out the assassins. I have to tell him.”

“Sure, I’ll get it.” Belle left the room, and Emma felt a great weight lift off her shoulders.

In the wake of the curse-breaking and several people remembering the feuds they’d had with either Regina or Snow White and Charming over the years, it had been unanimously decided that Henry, despite his comparatively young age, needed a cell phone in case someone decided that he was an excellent target to use as leverage.

Belle returned with her purse and took out an old Nokia, handing it over.

“Rumpel gave it to me just in case,” she said. “As much as it’s taking me a little while to get used to the kitchen technology, I do like experimenting with all the gadgets.”

Emma had to smile at Belle’s bright enthusiasm and acceptance of the new and quite scary modern world that she had unceremoniously found herself in, and she began the painstaking process of using the ancient phone to tap out a message to Henry.

_Henry, this is Mom, IM OK! U hav 2 keep scrt tho dont tell any1._

Her heart lifted as a response came a couple of minutes later.

_I knew it! Glad you’re ok, I’ll keep quiet. Mom & grandma & grandpa already suspect you got out and are lying low. Operation Barbecue is on! Stay safe!_

Emma sighed and handed the phone back to Belle, who giggled at the message.

“Someone needs to tell that boy he has incredibly poor taste.”

She felt a lot lighter now that she knew that Henry knew she was safe and that her parents had hope for her survival even if she hadn’t contacted them. She knew that she could trust Henry not to tell anyone else, and she liked to think that she could trust Belle not to snitch on her to Gold. However strange the method might be, she was beginning to have a little confidence that everything would turn out to a satisfactory conclusion in the end.

Belle left the room quietly and Emma was alone with her thoughts for a while. She thought about the many happy couples that had been separated by the curse and had only now come back together again. At least in most cases they had been able to see each other around the town and know retrospectively that they’d been all right throughout the curse, even if they hadn’t been together. Belle and Gold didn’t have that comfort.

She shook herself out of that train of thought and made her way back downstairs. There wasn’t exactly much point in her settling into her room, she hopefully wouldn’t be there for very long and she hadn’t exactly packed a bag in all the commotion. She considered asking Belle for some pyjamas to borrow but considering the not insignificant height difference, she didn’t have much hope of anything of Belle’s fitting her. Plus there was the fact that Belle really didn’t look like a pyjama sort of person, if her everyday wardrobe was anything to go by. She seemed more of a lacy nightie type, and lingerie was definitely not something that should be shared. Especially not if it had likely already shared a bed with Gold.

Emma pushed that image very firmly out of her head.

Gold turned out to be a pretty decent cook, although having lived by himself for twenty-eight years and not starved to death, that was probably a given. Dinner was a pasta dish with creamy tomato sauce, although Emma still couldn’t reconcile the fact that an hour ago she had just barely escaped a raging fireball and now she was sitting down to a polite meal with Gold and his girlfriend.

Of all the things that she couldn’t get her head around, Emma found that the thing she found the strangest was just how tactile they were. Her brain had decided to set aside the explosions and murder attempts and fixate on the little touches that were passing between Belle and Gold. They were constantly brushing against each other as they moved around the kitchen, light touches to each other’s hands and arms. Perhaps on any other couple it would be unnerving - and it was slightly weird just how much they seemed to touch - but somehow Belle and Gold managed to make it look sweet and endearing. They gave the impression of a couple that was long established and yet still in their honeymoon period at the same time, and Emma found herself wondering exactly what their relationship had been like back in the Enchanted Forest. She was acutely aware that she was something of a third wheel here, not through any fault of her own, but that didn’t stop her feeling out of place and like she was intruding on something important and meaningful that she didn’t fully get yet.

Above everything though, however overly touchy-feely they might be, they seemed really, genuinely  _happy_ , and Emma found herself sincerely hoping that they would remain so.

X

Emma didn’t think it was too unreasonable that she couldn’t sleep considering everything that had happened to her that afternoon. She’d excused herself to bed pretty soon after dinner; feeling ever more like the gooseberry in Belle and Gold’s romance and not wanting to get in the way when it was clear that they weren’t accustomed to outside observers and obviously wanted to get a lot closer than they were. She was grateful that they’d put her up for the night, but whilst they had been forced to work together, she and Gold were not really friends and however lovely and welcoming Belle might be, no-one wanted things to be awkward.

Without her phone she had no idea how late it was, but she thought it was still pretty early. She hadn’t heard Belle and Gold come up the stairs, and as she crept out onto the landing, she saw that the lights were still on.

She tiptoed down the stairs, winging up a prayer that they weren’t having sex in the kitchen. She couldn’t hear any untoward noises coming from any of the rooms, just the sound of low conversation, and she was incredibly grateful, grabbing a glass of water and making to go back to her room without further ado.

The living room door was slightly ajar as she passed it, and against her better judgement, she had to take a peek inside.

Gold and Belle were sitting together on the sofa, curled up so close that there couldn’t have been any oxygen between them. They weren’t looking at each other, they were seemingly engrossed in the  _Law and Order_ rerun on the TV, but they had to be aware of that intense closeness. They weren’t staring longingly into each others’ eyes and they weren’t getting handsy and feeling each other up now that they didn’t have an audience, but there was a much deeper intimacy at play, tactile rather than visual, enjoying the sheer togetherness.

In a strange kind of way, they reminded Emma of her own parents, a solid and strong relationship rekindled. If there was one thing that had been instilled in Emma over the couple of months that she had been in Storybrooke and Henry had been giving her lessons in his fairy tale book, it was that her parents shared true love, and it was for this reason that she herself was - or at least was supposed to be - the saviour and so powerful, with the ability to break the curse.

It certainly looked like Gold and Belle shared that same true love. She didn’t want to think about them having kids just yet though.

There was nothing to be gained from watching them from the shadows like a creeper, and Emma made her way silently back upstairs to the guest room, lying in the dark for a long time, a single thought drifting through her subconscious as she nodded off.

It Rumpelstiltskin, of all people, could find true love, then surely she could too.

X

The next morning found Emma slightly confused when she woke to find herself in a very unfamiliar bedroom. For the briefest of moments she wondered if she’d got hilariously drunk the previous evening and wandered into the wrong house by mistake, but this notion was quickly dismissed by the lack of a hangover and the knowledge that no matter how drunk she might have got in the past, she’d never yet mistaken her own address.

Once she got her eyes open fully, the memories quickly returned and she found herself staring up at the ceiling of Gold’s spare room, letting the knowledge that most of the rest of the town thought she was dead sink in. It was quite a sobering thought.

Well, perhaps they didn’t think she was dead. There was always the chance that she had survived the explosion and got out of the building in time. If anyone went poking about in the wreckage then they wouldn’t find any human remains. David would probably have already taken a look and she liked to think that the fact there was no obvious evidence of her inside would have proved encouraging for him and Mary Margaret. If there was one thing that they were both good at, it was holding onto hope in the most difficult of circumstances.

Still, there was nothing to be gained from staring at the ceiling contemplating her own existence and feeling incredibly guilty about the pain that her friends and family were going through, not knowing whether she was ok or not. The sooner she got out of bed, the sooner she could corner Gold and get him to help her find out what the hell was going on and who the hell had tried to kill her, and the sooner she could reunite with her worried friends.

She got out of bed and pulled yesterday’s clothes back on, finger-combing her hair. She had no doubt that Belle would lend her a hairbrush if she asked, but something made her not want to. She already felt enough of a third wheel in the house, and she just wanted to get out as quickly as possible. It wasn’t that Belle and Gold’s relationship made her uncomfortable, although it was weird to see him so soft and loving. It was just that they were so content together and so happy as a duo that she didn’t want anything to intrude on that calmness and tranquility, least of all herself. The pink house had turned into a safe haven away from everything that was going on in the town and having seen Belle and Gold be so at home here, Emma wanted to keep it that way. The longer she stayed, the more she was bringing the woes of the outside world in with her.

She made her way downstairs towards the kitchen, finding that Belle and Gold were already there, fully-dressed and ready to start the day. She must have slept later than she thought; nearly getting killed must really take it out of you.

It was a quaint domestic scene: Gold in his apron standing at the stove making eggs, and Belle watching over the toaster. Presently it popped up and she put the slices in the toast rack before grabbing another couple of slices of bread. She glanced over at the door, perhaps sensing that someone was watching her, and smiled.

“Good morning,” she said. “Did you sleep well?”

It seemed a strange thing to say to someone who was nearly blown up the day before, but in hindsight it was probably the best thing in the circumstances. Best to try and maintain some semblance of normalcy, after all.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Good morning, Miss Swan.” Gold slipped the eggs out of the pan onto a dish and set them on the table. “Help yourself to coffee.”

Not entirely sure that she wasn’t still dreaming, Emma went over to the coffee pot and poured herself a mug. She was in the home of the great (albeit not currently magically enabled) sorcerer and trickster Rumpelstiltskin, and she couldn’t get over just how  _mundane_  everything was. How utterly and completely everyday and non-threatening.

“Toast?” Belle offered. “The toaster was the first thing in the kitchen I learned how to use. I don’t burn it anymore.”

Gold chuckled. “The smoke alarm took a bit of a beating the first time you made toast on your own, didn’t it?”

Belle rolled her eyes and grabbed the piece of toast he’d taken out of his hand.

“There’ll be no toast for you if you don’t learn to appreciate my toast-making abilities,” she said. “You ought to be proud of my accomplishments in mastering strange technology here.”

“I’m very proud.” He kissed her cheek and stole his toast back, neither of them caring about Emma watching them, half-asleep and bug-eyed in disbelief. Surely this was all a dream.

Sipping her coffee and contemplating her toast and eggs, accepting the surreal reality of the situation, Emma was gradually coming to a huge realisation. Despite what she might think of Gold, and her repeated mantra that she did not entirely trust him, he evidently trusted her, enough to let her into his home and display the full extent of his feelings for Belle.

It was clear that their relationship had been used against him to Belle’s cost in the past, and yet Gold trusted her enough to allow her to see it, which meant that he implicitly trusted her not to use it against him like some others would have done in the past. Sitting here witnessing this quiet and homely domesticity was a privilege that would be extended to very few others, if anyone at all.

Maybe it was because she was the prophesied saviour and she’d broken the curse and allowed him and Belle to reunite. Maybe it was something else. But now that she was here and had been allowed into this inner sanctum, she felt duty bound to protect it. What she was being permitted to see was for her eyes only. Yes, the rest of the town knew about Belle and from the amount of time that the two of them spent together it was clear that they were close. Just how close, and how obviously in love they were, well, that was something to be kept more between the two of them.

Emma felt no desire to share the discovery with anyone. It would be a disservice to Belle, at the very least. For a woman with no memories and twenty-eight years’ worth of hazy imprisonment, she had happily let Emma into the only place in Storybrooke that she could call home and feel safe in. The last thing that she wanted to do was place her in some kind of danger by proxy due to her association with Rumpelstiltskin.

It was perfectly possible and indeed probable that Gold had some kind of ulterior motive in rescuing her from her fate and giving her this hospitality. He hadn’t mentioned any favours yet, but it was likely that she would find herself reminded of this incident in the future if something happened which would require her to take sides.

For the moment she would accept it, just grateful to be alive at the end of it all. She already owed him one favour that he hadn’t collected yet; she could add one more to the list and all things considered, he had saved her life and hadn’t exactly given her any choice in the matter.

But Emma was fairly sure that Belle had no such compunctions and had just opened up her home out of the goodness of her heart. Emma couldn’t repay her kindness by being cavalier about her safety. For as long as it was in her power, the depth of the love between Belle and Gold would remain Emma’s closely guarded secret.

Breakfast continued in a companionable quiet, and Emma continued to observe the easy intimacy between the two of them that they had shown the previous evening, finally seeing the constant touching, the brushing of fingers, for what it really was; a reassurance that after such a long separation, they were both there together; they were both real. Belle started to talk about her plans for the day, taking a look at the boarded-up library with a view to getting it started again. Emma decided not to mention the hopefully deceased dragon in the basement.

They were really quite sweet to watch, Emma thought, once she’d got over the initial shock of trying to match up her previous impressions of Gold with the one she now had in front of her. They gave her a kind of warm, fuzzy feeling inside. After so long of the David-Kathryn-Mary Margaret problem whilst the curse had still been in place, it was nice to see that couples were quickly reuniting and becoming established again, no matter how unorthodox or unexpected those couples might be.

Soon enough, though, the meal was finished and plates were being cleared. It was time to leave the happy domestic nest and face their problems head on.

Gold gave her a wry smile.

“All right, Miss Swan. Shall we discover who tried to kill you?”

X

Trying to conduct a police investigation when the local police station was currently a pile of charred and smoking ruins was never going to be the easiest of endeavours, and Emma was privately very impressed that they’d managed it.

Frollo and the seemingly harmless old woman who ran the tearoom (and who was keeping rather tight-lipped about her fairy tale identity, leaving Emma to think that she had simply been a disgruntled peasant wanting to express indignation at all the trouble that the royals had caused over the years) had indeed been responsible for the explosion, just as Emma had predicted.

They hadn’t really planned their attack all that well and the logistical difficulties of not having a sheriff’s station anymore aside, it hadn’t been too hard to gather evidence that would stick. Of course, getting arrest warrants and all that kind of thing when the person you were trying to get warrants against was the judge who would ultimately sign them was an entirely different matter, and Emma was currently massaging her temples to try and get rid of the headache that had been plaguing her for the last two days.

The sheriff’s station was out of action for the foreseeable future. Regina was in the process of approving the budget to get it rebuilt but the insurance was proving a problem, especially since Storybrooke didn’t really exist outside of its own little bubble and the insurance company were having a hard enough time believing that there was such a town and that it had a sheriff’s station let alone that it had been blown up by a pair of angry middle-aged professionals for seemingly no reason beyond wanting the villains of their stories to get happy endings for once.

Emma had set up a temporary office in the town hall, which was useful whenever she needed to go and have words with Regina, but not so useful for keeping suspects locked up. As loath as she had been to use the secure ward under the hospital after learning what had happened to Belle, it was really the only option, even if it did mean that Emma had to take a scenic tour of the town every time she needed to question her suspects. The fact that DA Spencer had now remembered that he had previously been a king wasn’t helping matters either. Emma had to wonder if some of the townsfolk had, upon regaining their memories of the Enchanted Forest, forgotten the immediately preceding twenty-eight years and what they’d done during them.

She shook her head with a sigh, putting aside all the paperwork relating to the case. It occurred to her that she probably shouldn’t be investigating her own attempted murder, but there wasn’t really anyone else that she could pass it on to. The trials of small town life and being unable to bring anyone in from outside. It was time to stop for the day, and go and meet up with Henry at Granny’s. None of it was going to go anywhere. Whatever strange magic was keeping everyone inside the town took care of that.

As she approached the diner, she saw two familiar figures coming out of it. Belle and Gold were arm in arm; Gold’s coat draped over Belle’s shoulders as they made their way from the diner back towards the pawn shop where the Cadillac was parked. They didn’t notice her approaching, both too completely besotted in each other to pay anything else any mind. She wondered if she ought to warn them that they were about to cross a road; she really didn’t want to have to deal with two lovebirds getting themselves run over, especially not when she hadn’t had any dinner yet.

Thankfully they made it across the road without incident, and Emma stopped outside the diner to watch them for a moment. The sweetness that there had been between them when they had been in private in their own home was still there, maybe a little more understated than it had been before, but nevertheless making it obvious that they were together and that they would remain so for a long time to come. Gold opened the passenger door for Belle and she handed his coat back to him, but before she got in, she leaned in to kiss his cheek; a kiss that ended up a much more passionate one on the lips.

Emma couldn’t help but smile. Of all the people to have found true love in true fairy tale fashion, Gold was probably at the bottom of her list of candidates, but it just went to show that absolutely anything was possible. And if he made Belle happy, which he obviously did, well, Emma would make sure that nothing came between them.

“It’s really quite something, isn’t it?”

Emma startled; she hadn’t heard Granny come out of the diner behind her to clear one of the outdoor tables. The older woman nodded across the road towards Belle and Gold as they got into the car and drove away.

“Yes,” Emma agreed. “Despite everything, I just get the overwhelming urge to protect them.”

“Believe me, you’re not the only one.” Granny’s smile was crafty, and in that moment Emma received the distinct impression that Granny would make an excellent deputy should she fancy a career change. “Everyone thinks that I’ve got my crossbow out to deter intruders, which is certainly true, but if I see anyone attempting to get between those two, well…”

She left the rest of the sentence unsaid, but Emma could understand her sentiments perfectly. There was definitely more to Gold than met the eye, and it was clear that Belle was going to be the one to bring it out. In that moment, Emma could only wish them every happiness together.

Even if she still didn’t really trust Rumpelstiltskin as far as she could throw him.


End file.
